D&D General Your Character Died! Who's Fault Was It?

[CleverNickName]

Here on EN World, if your D&D character dies in the middle of an adventure, it's customary to assign blame. So think back to the last time your character croaked--maybe it was years ago, maybe it was just at the last gaming session--and tell us who/what was to blame. Choose the answer that is closest to the truth, and then tell us all about it in the comments!

(I know that some of us are "forever DMs," who might never have played a character, let alone had one snuff it in the middle of an adventure. So this poll might not be suited for everyone.)

In case you didn't catch it from my tone, this is supposed to be a cheeky, making-fun-of-yourself thread. If you notice your blood getting angered over this, you're doing it wrong.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I wanted to pick two: the dice and myself. Ultimately, I chose the latter.

I do look forward to hearing about the under-optimized PC in the party who is to blame for the optimized PC dying.

 

[CleverNickName]

The last time I had a character die: my warlock was killed by a kraken.

The scene: in the middle of a protracted battle scene, long after I had spent all of my warlock's limited spell slots, the kraken smashed our ship into pieces. All six of our characters were thrown into the water. The DM placed our characters at random on the battle mat (it was a 20x20 grid, we rolled a d20 twice to find our characters' X and Y coordinates).

My character ended up all alone in the lower-left corner of the battle mat...adjacent to the kraken. Everyone else was clustered together in the upper-right.

By the time our healer could stop drowning long enough to get in range, the kraken had already swallowed my warlock's lifeless body.

So it was a tough call--I suppose I could blame the DM for putting us all in random locations, or blame the cleric for insisting on wearing friggin' full plate aboard a warship, or the fighter for not doing his friggin' job and killing the kraken before it could destroy said warship, but no. The blame lies squarely on the dice.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think the last time a character I was playing died it was a team effort lol. We walked into a fight with an entire tavern full of hostile NPCs that was very clearly telegraphed as too much for us to handle at once, but it was personal and as a group we were all in agreement that we were going to kill the sunsobitches no matter what it took. My barbarian singled out the boss and took all of his attention while the rest of the party mopped up the enormous number of minions. It worked for a while, but after several rounds it became clear that our strategy was not going to keep working, so my character and one other kept up the fight while the other three ran out and collapsed the ceiling of the tavern over our heads, taking the majority of the enemies (including the boss) down with us.

I voted for “I blame myself” though, because I volunteered for it.

 

[Piperken]

I touched the book... bound in human skin.

 

[Shiroiken]

While luck does play a factor, as a player I want to put the odds as highly in my favor as possible. If I die, then obviously I didn't do that, or I should've run.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

Pathfinder 1e. Bad decision from me, bad luck and bad tactics from another player.

I was playing a rogue/vivisectionist with a really crappy will save, and another player was playing a strength focused magus. We were hit by a confusion effect and both failed the saves.

The fight until this point was basically us steamrolling the opposition, so I never did anything to buff my AC.

Initiative was basically: Magus -> Me -> Everyone else

So what happened was, of course, that the Magus hit me and I had to hit him back.

We are now in a Confusion Lock, and it's impossible for either player to get out of it.

So another player decides to break the confusion lock by attacking me. It was a great idea to attack one of us, but attacking me made little sense, since the Magus was ahead of me in initiative, so when it's his turn he hits me again and I am down, and since I took damage from the other player's attack I'm below -CON in HP.

 

[Lanefan]

This one really needs the multi-vote option, as any and-or all of the first three options might apply for me depending on the particular death - and there's been a lot of 'em! - in question.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

I touched the book... bound in human skin.

Touching it you might get away with. Reading aloud from it, you're bleeped. If it's in Latin, the entire party's bleeped.

 

[Oofta]

I blame myself. I took the risk of playing an elf, thinking that perhaps 5E had broken the curse. Then at the end of the first session, last fight, the last enemy standing critted and because the DM wanted to give me a chance to survive he rolled the damage. Max normal and crit. Instant death ensued.